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Lallana: Arsenal rout shows Liverpool can contend for title

Adam Lallana: Liverpool can deliver title this year

Adam Lallana says Liverpool’s blistering second half assault on Arsenal shows they can be title contenders – if they avoid the complacency that followed.

The Reds scored three goals in 14 minutes to leave the Gunners reeling at 4-1 before running our 4-3 winners at the Emirates thanks to two goals from Philippe Coutinho and one a piece from debutant Sadio Mane and Lallana himself.

However, while Lallana was happy to start their Premier League campaign with a win and believes Liverpool have what it takes to achieve “something special” this season, he admitted they made harder work of it that they perhaps should have done.

“We started the game not so brightly after we thought we have quite a good preseason. It’s always difficult coming to Arsenal,” Lallana told Sky Sports.

“On the stroke of half time, [Coutinho] came up with a bit of magic and it gave us a bit of a lift. The manager had a few words at half time and I thought we came out brilliantly. We maybe got a bit complacent at 4-1, but we saw it out at the end.

“Arsenal are a top team. We’ve got a few new players in our squad still gelling together and if we want to achieve something special this year we are going to have to be more disciplined defensively as a unit.

“We’ve got huge belief. You only have to look at our squad and we have top players on the bench and back at Melwood not fit enough to be with us. We’ve got a great squad. We’re not in Europe this year so we have a lot of weeks where we just have one game a week.

“We’ve got our targets and we’ll take it game-by-game and three points today was brilliant.”